[00:29 - 00:42] In this lecture, we're going to treat Thomas Aquinas on the natural

law. As I mentioned in the last lecture, Thomas Aquinas treats

two subjects that are central to the Declaration of
Independence.[00:43 - 00:51] The first is nature's God. The
second is the law of nature. In this lecture, we'll treat the law of
nature.
[00:52 - 01:04] Now, when I teach this segment of Aquinas in class, I will often ask
my students, what did the framers mean by the law of nature?
Give me an example of a law of nature.
[01:04 - 01:14] And I've been doing this for 20 years, and without fail, the first
student that raises his or her hand says, gravity.
[01:16 - 01:28] To which I always reply, you are right. The American founding was
rooted in the law of nature. Now, it is true that the law of gravity
was probably very important
[01:28 - 01:38] in some sense to the Revolutionary War and to America's
independence, but I don't think that's what the American
founders were referring to in the Declaration of Independence.
[01:38 - 01:47] They were referring to a natural moral law when they talked about
the law of nature. And one of the most important sources
[01:47 - 01:58] for thinking about the natural law is Thomas Aquinas. There are a
number of sources, and there are antecedents to his treatment
of the natural law in Stoicism, in Cicero especially,
[01:58 - 02:11] but it's Aquinas who first gives us a really developed account of the
natural law, even if it's not fully developed. Now, people have lots
of impressions about the natural law today.
[02:11 - 02:23] There are different theories of the natural law, and I'm not going
to go through all of those theories. I may say a few things about
some aspects of them as we go. My purpose here, in this lecture,
[02:23 - 02:32] is just to give you Aquinas' view of the natural law and the basic
outline of that understanding, and along the way,
[02:32 - 02:45] to address some possible caricatures of the natural law that some
people have. So, let's begin. The first place to start when we think
about the natural law
[02:45 - 02:55] and the Summa Theologiae is actually on the question of goodness.
And you'll see why later. In the fifth question, Aquinas treats the
question
[02:56 - 03:05] whether every being is good. This is an interesting question, and
it's important to see how he answers it.
[03:06 - 03:17] He starts with objections that not every being is good. In fact, if
I asked you, is everything that exists good? I wonder how you
would answer it.
[03:18 - 03:30] St. Thomas' short answer is, every being is good. Every being that
is not God is God's creature. Now, every creature of God is good.
He cites 1 Timothy.
[03:31 - 03:43] And God is the greatest good. Therefore, every being is good. And
then he describes to us what goodness means. He's already
treated the meaning of goodness earlier,
[03:43 - 03:55] but he reminds us that being and goodness are, in fact, the exact
same thing under different aspects. Well, what does that mean?
I'll read what he says here.
[03:56 - 04:08] Every being as being is good, for all being as being has actuality. All
being is actual. It's actualizing something.
[04:08 - 04:19] If something was pure potential, it wouldn't exist. You can't have
pure potency. So it's some kind of actuality. And so it is in some
way perfect.
[04:19 - 04:31] Since every act implies something, some sort of perfection. And
perfection implies desirability and goodness, as is clear from
question one.
[04:31 - 04:39] Hence, it follows that every being as such is good. Okay, so what is
Aquinas saying here?
[04:39 - 04:52] He's saying that goodness is being under the aspect of moving
towards its finality, its telos, its perfection, its actuality.
[04:52 - 05:05] When we looked at the apple earlier, we saw the apple existing. It
exists as being. It's an apple at a high degree of potency and a
small degree of actuality.
[05:05 - 05:18] It lacked perfection. When that apple grows into a full, mature
apple tree, it becomes more perfect. And it is built into the apple
to direct itself
[05:18 - 05:30] toward its full and complete flourishing, as a complete apple tree.
At that point, we say it's a perfect apple tree. So perfection and
goodness are referring to the same thing,
[05:30 - 05:42] but under different aspects. And St. Thomas highlights that the
aspect of goodness is an aspect of desirability. It engages our
appetite. It engages our desire.
[05:42 - 05:53] We desire goodness. And when we desire goodness, we are already
desiring the perfection of something. What does that mean for
evil?
[05:54 - 06:03] That's probably a question that came to your mind as I was
speaking. Well, if everything that exists is good, are you denying
evil?
[06:05 - 06:15] You maybe will be surprised to know that St. Thomas actually denies
that evil exists. Now, we need to be clear about this.
[06:15 - 06:28] St. Thomas isn't saying that evil is absolutely not evil. He's not
denying nothing. What he does say is that evil is the privation of
a good. That's a very specific word he uses,
[06:29 - 06:42] privation. Privation means the absence of something that ought to
be there. So, if you think about blindness, we say someone is blind.
And what do we mean? Do we mean that a thing is there?
[06:42 - 06:53] No. We use the word as a positive statement, but in fact what it
means is, there's an absence of something that ought to be there,
that is, a power to see.
[06:53 - 07:00] So, blindness is what Aquinas will call a material evil. It's not a
moral evil. There's no act of the will,
[07:02 - 07:12] no wrong choice that causes blindness in most cases. Blindness is
something that happens. It's a material evil. It's a privation of a
good that ought to be there.
[07:13 - 07:23] And that means that evil is always parasitical on good. Evil is always
just a parasite. Without good, it could not exist.
[07:23 - 07:36] And so, this would also mean that we have to say that, theologically
speaking, Satan is good. Satan is good insofar as he exists. God
made him, and he has being,
[07:36 - 07:47] but he is evil insofar as the perfections of his being are no longer
there. They are missing because of his abuse of his freedom.
[07:47 - 07:57] And so, when Aquinas talks about moral choice and what directs our
moral choices, and especially what misdirects our moral choices,
[07:57 - 08:10] it is the fact that we're always pursuing goods, but in a way that
wrenches them out from the fullness of the perfection that is
proper to those goods. Okay.
[08:10 - 08:22] So, with that background, we're going to move ahead to the first
part, the second part of the Summa. Remember, the first part of
the Summa is the exitus,
[08:22 - 08:35] the exiting of all creation from God through his goodness. Part two
is on human beings, on man who is the highest creature that God
makes as a person.
[08:35 - 08:46] St. Thomas tells us that at the beginning of the second part. And
in the first part of the second part, beginning with question 90,
[08:46 - 08:57] St. Thomas begins to talk about the nature of law. This is sometimes
called the treatise on law, and it extends for a large number of
questions through the Summa.
[08:58 - 09:07] So, we're going to go to question 91, Article 1, and work our way
through it. And I'm going to make some observations along the
way as we go.
[09:09 - 09:14] The first article in this question is whether there is an eternal law.
[09:14 - 09:27] St. Thomas's objections are that there is not an eternal law. But
he responds, on the contrary, Augustine says,
[09:27 - 09:38] that law, which is the supreme reason, cannot be understood to be
otherwise than unchangeable and eternal. First thing to notice,
[09:38 - 09:50] law is defined as reason. I think there's a tendency in our own
culture to think about law as a law. As will.
[09:51 - 10:01] As will first. As someone who extrinsically imposes upon you some
kind of obligation or direction,
[10:02 - 10:14] usually with coercive penalties attached to it. But for Aquinas,
importantly, law is first and foremost reason. He elaborates,
[10:14 - 10:27] I answer that, as stated above, a law is nothing else but a dictate of
practical reason emanating from the ruler
[10:28 - 10:38] who governs a perfect community. That's the sort of highest
meaning of law, the focal meaning of law. A dictate of practical
reason
[10:39 - 10:50] from a ruler who governs a perfect community. You'll see where
Aquinas is going with this. Now it is evident, granted that the
world is ruled by a ruler, ruled by divine providence,
[10:50 - 11:00] as was stated in the first part, you can go back and look, that the
whole community of the universe is governed by divine reason.
[11:01 - 11:14] The eternal law is God's governing of his creation according to reason.
Wherefore the very idea of the government of things in God, the
rule of the universe, has the nature of a law.
[11:14 - 11:25] And so that's the divine law. What does that mean to govern the
universe by reason? It means that God directs all of his creation
to its proper ends.
[11:26 - 11:38] Then we go to the next question. Whether there is in us a natural
law. That's the subject of this lecture. And your question might
be
[11:38 - 11:49] just like the question Aquinas raises here, which is, we don't need a
natural law, you just told us there's an eternal law. He also raises
a second question,
[11:50 - 12:01] an objection to the idea that there's a natural law. Human beings act
by reason and free will. And other things act by natural instinct.
[12:01 - 12:13] So there's no natural law in human beings because they have reason.
The third objection is that human beings have freedom whereas
law obliges. All of these are kinds of objections
[12:13 - 12:25] that you might expect even today. Let's hear how St. Thomas replies
on this question whether there is a natural law. He says, On the
contrary,
[12:26 - 12:38] a gloss on Romans chapter 2 verse 14, and I encourage you to go
back and look at Romans 1 and 2 because the first two books of
Romans are what Thomas relies on
[12:38 - 12:48] for both the question on the existence of God and here on the
question of the natural law. This is St. Thomas quoting the
standard gloss. When the Gentiles who have not the law
[12:48 - 13:00] do by nature those things that are of the law, comments as follows,
Although they have no written law, yet they have the natural law,
whereby each one knows
[13:00 - 13:12] and is conscious of what is good and what is evil. So from St. Thomas'
view, and I think largely from the standard theological view in the
West,
[13:14 - 13:25] the idea of the natural law, the natural law is strongly supported in
Scripture. Scripture tells us that human beings are made to know
right and wrong
[13:25 - 13:36] and that they can be held responsible by God for their failures to
follow right and wrong. But then St. Thomas explains to us what
the natural law is.
[13:37 - 13:49] He tells us, Wherefore, since all things subject to divine providence
are ruled and measured by the eternal law, as was stated above,
it is evident that all things
[13:49 - 14:02] partake somewhat of the eternal law, insofar as, namely from its
being imprinted on them, they derive their respective inclinations
to their proper acts and ends. Now that's interesting.
[14:02 - 14:14] This is just what he's telling us. God governs his universe by
directing things to their perfection, to their goodness, to their
proper acts and ends. So we might say that the eternal law
[14:14 - 14:26] is the genus of law, but there are going to be species of it. Now
among all others, the rational creature is subject to divine
providence
[14:26 - 14:38] in the most excellent way, insofar as it partakes of a share of
providence by being provident both for itself and for others.
[14:39 - 14:50] Man, made in the image and likeness of God, has a share in divine
providence. God allows human beings to be co-creators,
[14:50 - 14:58] co-agents in the world of their actions and of their achievements
of goodness. Profound insight.
[15:00 - 15:11] Wherefore, it, that is the rational creature, man, has a share of the
eternal reason, whereby it has a natural inclinati
[15:11 - 15:23] to its proper act and end, and this participation of the eternal law in
the rational creature is called the natural law. So what is the
natural law?
[15:23 - 15:33] It is the rational creature's participation in the eternal reason of
God. Participation in the eternal reason. That is, through that
built into our nature
[15:33 - 15:44] is a kind of sharing in God's governance of the natural order. We
are given the gift, not simply of being driven by instinct
[15:44 - 15:57] toward our acts and ends, but really being able to understand and
appreciate the ordering towards our perfection, our goodness,
and to discover the means
[15:57 - 16:09] that will direct us to those goods. So implicit here in this question
on the natural law is a distinction between what I think
[16:09 - 16:21] we might call the law of nature on the one hand and the natural law
on the other. And I'm sorry to confuse you about this, but I think
it's important to make the distinction. We might say the law of
nature
[16:21 - 16:29] is the law studied by the physical sciences. The laws of nature are
Newtonian laws,
[16:29 - 16:41] law of gravity, thermodynamics, general relativity. These are the
things studied by science, the laws of nature. Even though the
Declaration uses that,
[16:41 - 16:52] I'm using it differently now just to highlight these differences. The
natural law, we might say, is the way human beings participate.
And these are two different ways of participating in the eternal
law.
[16:52 - 17:00] We get to actually understand and cooperate with our direction
towards our perfection.
[17:02 - 17:15] Next, Aquinas asks whether there is a human law. And now you're
hopefully getting familiar with the pattern he's following here.
We've got an eternal law. We've got a natural law. Why do we
need a human law?
[17:15 - 17:24] Why can't we all simply follow the natural law and get on with things?
St. Thomas's answer is a little more involved
[17:24 - 17:37] than what he puts right in this third article. To answer it well, we
would have to go back and look at his larger treatment of the
human law. And that's obviously really, really important.
[17:37 - 17:49] But for this lecture, I'm just going to say a few words about it that
I think will be interesting to you. St. Thomas thinks that human
beings are by nature political animals.
[17:49 - 18:01] That means that, as St. Thomas understands it, if Adam and Eve had
never sinned before the fall, they still would have had
government.
[18:01 - 18:11] That's a little different than how we think about politics today
because we often think about politics in the modern social
contract theory sense as a remedy for the fall.
[18:12 - 18:24] That is, we need government because of sinfulness or ignorance or
tendencies to violence or crime.
[18:25 - 18:37] But St. Thomas thinks even in the absence of those things, we would
have needed government. Why would we need government? Not
just to prevent wrong, but to provide good.
[18:37 - 18:49] And the good that St. Thomas thinks government would provide is
coordination of our actions when we live in society. We would need
parental authority to raise children
[18:49 - 19:00] and educate them. And parents and families living in close
association and pursuing their goods are going to need some way
to coordinate their actions together.
[19:00 - 19:12] For example, the building of roads or the establishment of weights
and measures. I'm just imagining back what that would be like. So
St. Thomas thinks that we would need a human law,
[19:12 - 19:25] these things that would not be fully just deductions from the natural
law, but things that human beings make in order to make their
lives more convenient and useful to them.
[19:26 - 19:37] So we're going to need a human law. We're going to need to, as we
live in community, we're going to need authorities who provide
certain direction and guidance for the flourishing of associations.
[19:41 - 19:53] Lots more to be said on that question, but we're going to move on to
the next article. Whether there was any need for a divine law.
You might have been asking this question yourself. And again,
here's the pattern.
[19:53 - 20:04] Okay, we got eternal law. We got natural law. We got human law.
Now you're bringing in divine law. And what does St. Thomas mean
by divine law? Isn't all law divine law?
[20:04 - 20:16] He's using it in a very specific sense. By begin law, St. Thomas
means divine revelation, specific revelation by God of things
[20:16 - 20:28] that we would not have understood or known apart from his
revelation. We've talked about certain truths, like God is three
persons in one nature,
[20:29 - 20:41] or the incarnation. These are not things that we could know by
natural reason. They had to be revealed to us. And similarly,
there's a divine law attached to those things.
[20:41 - 20:54] Most especially, it's the divine law is grace. The gift of grace that
empowers us with supernatural virtues of faith, hope, and charity.
[20:54 - 21:05] So why did we need a divine law? St. Thomas gives four reasons,
and I think all of them are important for illuminating what he
thinks about the natural law.
[21:05 - 21:16] The first reason is that St. Thomas says, if God had made us only
for a natural end, proportionate to our nature, then no divine law
would have been required.
[21:17 - 21:29] But God made us for supernatural life. God made us at the beginning
to perfect us by grace, to elevate us into his divine life
[21:29 - 21:38] and the beatific vision. As a church father has put it, God wanted
to divinize us in some fashion.
[21:38 - 21:48] And so because that end is beyond our nature, we needed a divine
law to help us get there. So that's the first reason he gives.
[21:48 - 22:01] The second reason he gives is the uncertainty of human judgment
about the requirements of the natural law. This is really
interesting and very important. I'm going to return to it in the
last question
[22:01 - 22:14] that I treat in today's lecture. But St. Thomas does not think that
because there's a natural law that it must be absolutely evident
and clear to everyone in all of its details.
[22:14 - 22:25] That is one of the caricatures of the natural law. And it's also then
one of the objections to it. How can there be a natural law if
people disagree so deeply on so many moral things?
[22:25 - 22:37] St. Thomas is perfectly aware when he treats the natural law that
there's going to be some disagreement. And he gives the reasons
for why. So he knows, that is St. Thomas knows and affirms
[22:37 - 22:47] that even with the natural law, we can't know everything the way
we ought to know it. And an example of this is the Ten
Commandments.
[22:49 - 22:59] Strikingly, St. Thomas thinks that most of the Ten Commandments
are merely repeats of what the natural law requires. He doesn't
think that the,
[22:59 - 23:11] the commandment against theft or lying or adultery is adding
anything that we couldn't otherwise know by reading into the law
of nature and consulting what reason requires.
[23:12 - 23:24] What, there are some things in the Ten Commandments that we
perhaps could not know by natural reason. A clear example is keep
holy the Sabbath. How could we know that unless we knew God
created in six days
[23:24 - 23:35] and told us to rest on the seventh and keep holy the Sabbath? We
might have a general idea, that we ought to have times and
seasons in which we rest and worship God.
[23:35 - 23:48] But keeping holy the Sabbath is a very specific way of doing that.
Okay, thirdly, St. Thomas points out that human laws,
[23:48 - 23:59] at the very least, can only direct external action, not internal
action. They can only tell us what behaviors to conform to or not
to conform to.
[23:59 - 24:09] Human laws, at the very least, cannot direct our interior actions.
And, but our perfection requires both exterior conformity and
interior conformity.
[24:09 - 24:20] And so, the divine law helps to direct our interior lives towards this
perfection. Finally, St. Thomas points out that the human law, and
he's following Augustine here,
[24:21 - 24:33] cannot punish or forbid all evil deeds. I said there's a lot more to
be said about the human law. This is one of the important things.
St. Thomas and St. Augustine do not think
[24:33 - 24:43] that the human law should prohibit all vice. In fact, they quite
firmly say that a lot of evil should be permitted by the human law,
lest greater evils break out.
[24:44 - 24:56] St. Thomas gives us a very robust, and I think, very prudent view
about good government. So, human law can't forbid all evil
because,
[24:57 - 25:08] while aiming at doing away with all evil, it would do away with many
good things and would hinder the advance of the common good
which is necessary for human intercourse.
[25:08 - 25:21] In order, therefore, that no evil might remain unforbidden and
unpunished, it was necessary for the divine law to supervene
whereby all sins are forbidden. So, just because human law
doesn't forbid it, doesn't mean it's good.
[25:22 - 25:33] Big questions about how all these laws are related to one another.
One of the biggest questions is the human law. Should the human
law be modeled on?
[25:33 - 25:43] Should it draw from all of the natural law or just part of it? Should
it also reflect the divine law? Should human law be at the service
of the divine law?
[25:44 - 25:52] These are still disputed questions in our time and they're really the
subject matter for a whole online course in itself.
[25:53 - 26:06] So, I'm just going to leave you now with the questions, though I
think St. Thomas, has pretty rich answers to them. Now, we are
going to turn to St. Thomas on the natural law.
[26:06 - 26:17] This is question 94 of the first part of the second part of the
Summa Theologiae, and the whole question is of the natural law.
St. Thomas treats it in six articles.
[26:17 - 26:30] I want to focus on article two, which is really the most important
article on the natural law, the one you should read that is
referred to most often in Treatments of the Natural Law. So,
here's the question.
[26:30 - 26:43] St. Thomas asks whether the natural law contains several precepts
or one only. And here's how he answers the question. He says, the
precepts of the natural law
[26:44 - 26:55] are to the practical reason what the first principles of
demonstration are to the speculative reason. So, he distinguishes
the practical reason
[26:55 - 27:05] from the speculative reason. Keep that distinction in mind. Because
both, he says, are self-evident principles.
[27:06 - 27:18] Now, we talked about the self-evident principles of the speculative
reason in our discussion of Aristotle. If you remember, we talked
about the principle of non-contradiction. Remember me moving my
arms here,
[27:19 - 27:30] flapping my arms like a bird? Am I moving? And we talked a little
bit about the principle of sufficient reason. Ex nihilo nihil fit.
From nothing, nothing comes. These self-evident first principles.
[27:31 - 27:42] Now, I want to talk about self-evidence. That's a phrase that's
used in the Declaration of Independence. We hold these truths
to be self-evident that all men are created equal.
[27:42 - 27:52] Now, I ask my students, what does that mean? Most often, my
students say, obvious. And then I ask them,
[27:52 - 28:04] is it obvious that all men are created equal? Most of them shake
their heads, no. Because people are different in so many ways.
[28:05 - 28:17] Different height, different eye color, different strength,
different intelligence, different abilities. Nothing seems more
obvious than that people are different.
[28:18 - 28:29] So, is this phrase then false? What do we make of the fact that if
it's obvious, no one else really thought to say it
[28:29 - 28:41] until 1776? Or if John Locke, if we trace it back to John Locke a
little bit earlier than that, it certainly seems to be very late
[28:41 - 28:51] in human history that the assertion of the obvious truth that all
men are created equal is made. But we're assuming here that self-
evident means obvious.
[28:51 - 29:02] If we have a classical education, we can read the Declaration of
Independence with no problem. If we don't, we run into some
problems. This is what St. Thomas tells us.
[29:03 - 29:15] And by the way, he's just summarizing Aristotle here. All of his
readers would have been familiar with what he was saying. Now, a
thing is said to be self-evident in two ways. First, in itself.
[29:16 - 29:28] Second, in relation to us. Any proposition is said to be self-evident,
evident in itself, if its predicate is contained in the notion of the
subject. Whoa, big words.
[29:28 - 29:40] Okay, what's a self-evident truth? A self-evident truth is a
proposition in which the predicate is contained within the subject.
St. Thomas gives us an example.
[29:40 - 29:52] Man is a rational animal. Every time we say man, we say rational
animal. Every time we say rational animal, we say man.
[29:52 - 29:58] They say the same thing. That's a perfect essential definition

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